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Microsoft Pledges Conditional Support for ODF
Macthorpe writes "BetaNews is reporting that Microsoft has announced in a letter that they will support ODF as a format option, if it doesn't 'restrict choice among formats'. Citing their lack of opposition to the ratification of ODF as a standard, they go on to say: 'ODF's design may make it attractive to those users that are interested in a particular level of functionality in their productivity suite or developers who want to work that format. Open XML may be more attractive to those who want richer functionality [...] This is not to say that one is better than the other — just that they meet different needs in the marketplace.'"
Is it just me, or do other people feel like gagging every time someone at Microsoft says something is "rich," has "richness," "rich user experience," etc.
It's like eating a whole stick of butter with mayonnaise to dip it in. MS "richness" can't be good for you.
*hurls into the wastebasket*
My feeling is this - you create your document 'easily' using standard Office suite interfaces. It saves it like it would a publisher file which lays out your doc and specifies EXACTLY where everythign goes. When you open it again, it is formatted perfectly and you keep editing until the cycle repeats. Not sure why this wouldn't be possible. Like the reply below you suggests, uniting office level of control with a desktop publishing level of precision might lead to a killer application.
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
If ODF support were perfect, I might consider buying an updated OS X version of Word when a native Intel version is available - I would want to try a 30 day demo first, however. I own licenses for older versions of Word/Office for Windows and OS X (I am an author and most of my publishers like manuscripts delivered in Word formats). I have written several books using OpenOffice.org, and at the last minute converted to Word.
That said, at least for my work on Mac OS X, the best writing tools are: TexShop with OmniGraffle for technical diagrams. Latex and OmniGraffle are a great combination!
Personally, I think file formats will become irrelevant to the end user.
It's really dumb that (for instance) we produce documents in Word, convert them to PDF, email them to someone else, who will read them on a computer screen. We are stuck in last generation technology, and people growing up with the web today just won't do it. Although many of us find it hard to believe, on-line systems will eventually replace Microsoft Word, OpenOffice etc. completely.
When that happens, the file formats will be irrelevant to the end user, just as web page formats are pretty much irrelevant to current web users. This is bad news for Microsoft, since they have an incredible amount of lock-in at the moment due to their proprietary formats. However, they are not going to be able to transition that lock-in to the web.
Well, after reading TFA, I get the impression that Microsoft hasn't really gone for "active support" as such. What they have said is that they didn't object to ODF going through the standards bodies.
Of course, with ODF being a fairly well documented open standard, there wasn't really any convincing way that they *could* object.
What makes MS very, very scared is widespread ODF adoption. Once state governments started to mandate open standards in government documents, it looked pretty much like ODF would get adopted. Not because ODF was superior, but because they had bothered to go through ANSI/ISO etc.
Since then, there has been a two pronged solution for microsoft. One has been to get OOXML to become a "proper standard", and the other is to browbeat state governments into giving up their policies. The former ran into problems, when IBM and others pointed out to ECMA that the OOXML spec was anything but open.
Microsoft cried foul straight away. Their argument "We didn't object to ODF, why are you objecting to OOXML?". The answer from IBM et al. was -- the OOXML standard sucks, and can only be implemented by someone who has the source code for all versions of MS-Office. It's not open, and until it is, we are not supporting it.
This "announcement" by MS, is nothing more than a warmed over restatement of this position, and mentions some esoteric features of OOXML that are not in ODF.
But, OOXML does have more features. Why, there is the "kern italics font as in Word 95" feature. And the "line spacing as displayed in Word 6" feature.
Really, please do read the OOXML standard. It reads like Microsoft putting into words every single quirk their products have ever had, and then knowing that no one else could possibly hope to implement it.
Bearded Dragon
If ODF becomes a standard and OOXML does not, Microsoft will do one of two things (or both).
1) Use their existing leverage in the market to push their own format anyway, possibly by providing a crappy bug-ridden conversion utility. This way, if people try to jump off the "sinking Microsoft format ship" then they will not be able to do so perfectly (i.e. loss of formatting/limbs/life)
2) Embrace, Extend, Extinguish (as one poster noted with Java). They will use the committees that they have already loaded with Microsoft business partners to pass many "updates" or revisions to the standard, probably to the point where it's less like ODF and more like OOXML. Maybe they'll even shove VML into ODF, because they can't be arsed to support SVG in Word.